I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
Frankly I would rather avoid Twitter altogether but there are some voices on Covid Twitter with a much better handle on interpreting the numbers than the news outlets. Other than that it can do one as far as I’m concerned.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
IMV the problem with the 1980s mine closures was that they were the latest in a long string of closures, dating back decades. Before then, when a pit closed, there was often one or more remaining in the immediate area. People would lose their jobs, but those who really wanted to mine could still do so. There were also more heavy industries that miners could move into.
But by the early 1980s, closures and amalgamations of mines meant that there might be only a handful left in any area. A pit closed, and the nearest was ten miles away. With the closure of that last pit in an area, the area lost massively, directly and indirectly to support industries. This was accompanied by the death of many heavy industries.
I love the way some people ignore all the mine closures that occurred before and after Thatcher. Simplistic people looking for simplistic, one-word answers to the problems in the world. 'Thatcha!'
A friend who comes from Fife told me about the culture shock when West Central Belt miners were transplanted en masse in the 1950s and 1960s to staff the big superpits in Fife - complete with Orange marches etc.
Mr. Seal, Twitter has provided me with some fantastic F1 bets/tips.*
Verstappen at 251 for Spain 2016 stands out, but also multiple, including Perez 61 to win, for Sakhir 2020.
And, oddly, the last but one Lib Dem leadership contest which enabled me to lay almost every candidate as they withdrew having luckily backed Swinson a few days previously.
Edited to clarify: *by this I mean information for making said bets, not tips directly.
Mr. Oracle, it's been a while since I watched news regularly but one thing that stuck with me was Nick Robinson, as BBC political editor, having a bizarre line on attempts to reduce net migration (I believe by the Coalition Government or it may even have been a Cameron policy in opposition). He implied heavily it was essentially racist because most EU (then unaffected) migrants were white and most non-EU migrants had 'black and brown faces'.
I think sometimes journalists decide they have an opinion and go hunting for evidence and witnesses to support it, rather than gathering information and presenting it.
If you set out grievance hunting over BBC reporting you'll come up with all kinds of stuff. As a regular listener, it seems to me that he mostly just tries to put the opposing case to whomever he happens to be interviewing.
For a moment I did worry that that key Scottish segment of ex miner Scottish Tories, otherwise known as Tom who lives outside Kirkcaldy, might be offended but then I remembered that Tom had a sense of humour.
Nice try David, but you well know the real problem here. Without strong levels of tactical voting from Scottish Labour and Scottish Liberal Democrat voters there would not be a single Conservative MP in the country. I find it hard to imagine a better way for a Tory PM to antagonise large numbers of SLab supporters. They can go “home” to their first preference party very easily. That is why wiser SCon strategists are holding their heads in their hands.
The impact of these comments in Scotland is largely irrelevant. Of the 6 remaining Tory seats in Scotland they are all in largely posh, rural seats with no mining heritage of any significant and no Labour vote of any significance outside Dumfries and Galloway. Plus even if Boris lost all 6 Tory Scottish seats he would still have a comfortable majority of 68.
However, while Boris may have been correct that coal had to go as a primary energy source due to its impact on the climate (the fact the Scottish Greens, now in coalition with the SNP, are fiercely anti coal further shows the irrelevance of his remarks in Scotland) he needed to reflect on the damage his remarks might do in the Red Wall.
In fact of the 100 top Labour target seats for the next general election over a third of them have some heritage of coal mining.
So clearly Boris' remarks are a boost to Starmer.
To rectify the damage Boris could point out his government is opening the first newdeep coalmine in 30 years in Cumbria
This morning, as an example, I received a message from one of my deputy clerks which was: "Thanks, I will await developments".
This is yet another entry in my mail box which I often find a full time job just to keep on top of.
This type of email has increased enormously during lockdown and with remote working. Why? Is it the need to show that you are actually reading the emails sent? Or just to have contact? Or does my deputy clerk actually think that this is "work"? I very much fear the last of these. I am sure that there were studies which showed that emails were not in fact boosting productivity some years ago but if this exercise was repeated now with home working I have no doubt at all that it would show a diminution in output.
I get 50-150 work related emails a day. They ask me to do work. They are not work. They are a distraction from work. Leave me alone to get on with some work*!
I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
National flags a somewhat new fangled idea in any case
It’s now become a code on U.K. Twitter. Union Flag or St George’s Cross alone means “Brexiteer”. Union Flag plus EU Flag means “Soft Remainer”. EU flag alone means “FBPE” (more often than not with the actual hashtag). Saltire alone (or with EU flag) means “Pro-Indy”. Saltire plus Union Flag means “Unionist”. In no case have I any desire to engage as I already know what that person’s take will be, on most topics.
Boris putting his foot in it is hardly news but it was crass and he just does not seem to learn to measure his comments
Cop26 is heading for an enormous fudge and like so many of these overhyped events lots will be promised but little happens
Starmer demands the Cambo oil field is cancelled losing 1,000 plus Scots jobs, while Boris maintains he cannot intervene as HMG would be sued by the Company, and Sturgeon hides in a closet as she is scared to make any comment
I would be interested to hear from our SNP posters why Sturgeon is scared to comment
Why should she? It's not a devolved matter, and it's offshore so no planning permission applies AFAIK, and if her opponents are cutting each others' throats she might as well let the dust settle.
I don't think anyone wants coal back, nor the dirty dangerous work that it was.
It is emblematic of the decline in manufacturing industry and the employment stability of the communities around it, whether coal, steel, textiles* or shipbuilding. That transition to a post industrial society left a lot of lovers...
And not a small number of haters.
Could we have retained more of our manufacturing as the old industries were abandoned ? Quite possibly.
This morning, as an example, I received a message from one of my deputy clerks which was: "Thanks, I will await developments".
This is yet another entry in my mail box which I often find a full time job just to keep on top of.
This type of email has increased enormously during lockdown and with remote working. Why? Is it the need to show that you are actually reading the emails sent? Or just to have contact? Or does my deputy clerk actually think that this is "work"? I very much fear the last of these. I am sure that there were studies which showed that emails were not in fact boosting productivity some years ago but if this exercise was repeated now with home working I have no doubt at all that it would show a diminution in output.
I get 50-150 work related emails a day. They ask me to do work. They are not work. They are a distraction from work. Leave me alone to get on with some work*!
/end rant.
Or post on PB natch.
Politeness, especially if between just the 2 of you to show he has read your email.
If an email is between multiple parties however email etiquette does not require a response
I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
National flags a somewhat new fangled idea in any case
It’s now become a code on U.K. Twitter. Union Flag or St George’s Cross alone means “Brexiteer”. Union Flag plus EU Flag means “Soft Remainer”. EU flag alone means “FBPE” (more often than not with the actual hashtag). Saltire alone (or with EU flag) means “Pro-Indy”. Saltire plus Union Flag means “Unionist”. In no case have I any desire to engage as I already know what that person’s take will be, on most topics.
I have a pic of Mishima drawing a katana while smoking a fag. I fear it may reveal too much about me.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
For a moment I did worry that that key Scottish segment of ex miner Scottish Tories, otherwise known as Tom who lives outside Kirkcaldy, might be offended but then I remembered that Tom had a sense of humour.
Nice try David, but you well know the real problem here. Without strong levels of tactical voting from Scottish Labour and Scottish Liberal Democrat voters there would not be a single Conservative MP in the country. I find it hard to imagine a better way for a Tory PM to antagonise large numbers of SLab supporters. They can go “home” to their first preference party very easily. That is why wiser SCon strategists are holding their heads in their hands.
The impact of these comments in Scotland is largely irrelevant. Of the 6 remaining Tory seats in Scotland they are all in largely posh, rural seats with no mining heritage of any significant and no Labour vote of any significance outside Dumfries and Galloway. Plus even if Boris lost all 6 Tory Scottish seats he would still have a comfortable majority of 68.
However, while Boris may have been correct that coal had to go as a primary energy source due to its impact on the climate (the fact the Scottish Greens, now in coalition with the SNP, are fiercely anti coal further shows the irrelevance of his remarks in Scotland) he needed to reflect on the damage his remarks might do in the Red Wall.
In fact of the 100 top Labour target seats for the next general election over a third of them have some heritage of coal mining.
So clearly Boris' remarks are a boost to Starmer.
To rectify the damage Boris could point out his government is opening the first newdeep coalmine in 30 years in Cumbria
That does assume that Westminster only is relevant. There's far more scope for damage at Holyrood, with Tory regional MSPs in the Central Belt.
For Boris and the UK government yes it only is Westminster that is relevant.
Holyrood is merely a creation of Westminster statute after all and the Tories will never win a majority at Holyrood as they now have at Westminster anyway.
The only way the Tories would ever get any power at Holyrood is in coalition with Labour and the LDs which is not the case at Westminster. So it does not really matter if some Tory regional MSPs in the Central belt are replaced by Labour regional MSPs as they would both be anti SNP.
Plus the next Holyrood election is not until 2026, the next Westminster election will be in 2023/4
This morning, as an example, I received a message from one of my deputy clerks which was: "Thanks, I will await developments".
This is yet another entry in my mail box which I often find a full time job just to keep on top of.
This type of email has increased enormously during lockdown and with remote working. Why? Is it the need to show that you are actually reading the emails sent? Or just to have contact? Or does my deputy clerk actually think that this is "work"? I very much fear the last of these. I am sure that there were studies which showed that emails were not in fact boosting productivity some years ago but if this exercise was repeated now with home working I have no doubt at all that it would show a diminution in output.
I get 50-150 work related emails a day. They ask me to do work. They are not work. They are a distraction from work. Leave me alone to get on with some work*!
/end rant.
Or post on PB natch.
Could simply be confirming that the email had got through - can be an issue sometimes.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
IMV the problem with the 1980s mine closures was that they were the latest in a long string of closures, dating back decades. Before then, when a pit closed, there was often one or more remaining in the immediate area. People would lose their jobs, but those who really wanted to mine could still do so. There were also more heavy industries that miners could move into.
But by the early 1980s, closures and amalgamations of mines meant that there might be only a handful left in any area. A pit closed, and the nearest was ten miles away. With the closure of that last pit in an area, the area lost massively, directly and indirectly to support industries. This was accompanied by the death of many heavy industries.
I love the way some people ignore all the mine closures that occurred before and after Thatcher. Simplistic people looking for simplistic, one-word answers to the problems in the world. 'Thatcha!'
Other way round too. It is this factor that you describe, that often it was the last pit in an area, that left desolated pit villages and one-industry towns, that does make what happened in the 1980s qualitatively different, and not mitigated by pointing to closures under other governments. iirc even Sir Geoffrey Howe acknowledged this.
I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
National flags a somewhat new fangled idea in any case
It’s now become a code on U.K. Twitter. Union Flag or St George’s Cross alone means “Brexiteer”. Union Flag plus EU Flag means “Soft Remainer”. EU flag alone means “FBPE” (more often than not with the actual hashtag). Saltire alone (or with EU flag) means “Pro-Indy”. Saltire plus Union Flag means “Unionist”. In no case have I any desire to engage as I already know what that person’s take will be, on most topics.
I have a pic of Mishima drawing a katana while smoking a fag. I fear it may reveal too much about me.
I’m actually “me” with an actual photo on Twitter. I occasionally post professional update and, more importantly, it stops me getting into unhinged drunken ranty arguments.
Considering this is one of our weaker performances at the Olympics in the velodrome - the medal return is still mightily impressive. Considering we are likely into a bit of a transition phase as well
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
This morning, as an example, I received a message from one of my deputy clerks which was: "Thanks, I will await developments".
This is yet another entry in my mail box which I often find a full time job just to keep on top of.
This type of email has increased enormously during lockdown and with remote working. Why? Is it the need to show that you are actually reading the emails sent? Or just to have contact? Or does my deputy clerk actually think that this is "work"? I very much fear the last of these. I am sure that there were studies which showed that emails were not in fact boosting productivity some years ago but if this exercise was repeated now with home working I have no doubt at all that it would show a diminution in output.
I get 50-150 work related emails a day. They ask me to do work. They are not work. They are a distraction from work. Leave me alone to get on with some work*!
/end rant.
Or post on PB natch.
It's an acknowledgement that (s)he has received and read your message. I quite often send messages which don't need an immediate response but do need to have been read by the recipients, and this is often actually helpful in telling you that's happened. Otherwise, you can find yourself sitting there a week later and wondering whether you need to chase on whether they saw it or if that will be perceived as rude or patronising.
However, it's long been clear that communication of this kind should not be by email. Which is why more and more organisations have switched to collaborative working tools (Slack, MS Teams, etc) to manage internal day-to-day comms. Posting a message, tagging the people who would have been copied in if it was an email, and for them to "like" the message seems to be current etiquette.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
IMV the problem with the 1980s mine closures was that they were the latest in a long string of closures, dating back decades. Before then, when a pit closed, there was often one or more remaining in the immediate area. People would lose their jobs, but those who really wanted to mine could still do so. There were also more heavy industries that miners could move into.
But by the early 1980s, closures and amalgamations of mines meant that there might be only a handful left in any area. A pit closed, and the nearest was ten miles away. With the closure of that last pit in an area, the area lost massively, directly and indirectly to support industries. This was accompanied by the death of many heavy industries.
I love the way some people ignore all the mine closures that occurred before and after Thatcher. Simplistic people looking for simplistic, one-word answers to the problems in the world. 'Thatcha!'
Edit: meant to explain that at least in Scotland in the 1950/60s-ish the NCB and councils/Scottish Special Housing Association worked together to create whole new housing estates for the miners from closed pits elsewhere to be moved into to staff the new modern pits, in Fife and Lothian.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
Interesting to hear Kenny and Archibald say that they had to put a lot of work into that partnership including train with the under-23 men.
Sometimes competitors can be a victim of their own success. It was difficult to watch that race and not think that the opposition was a bit rubbish, but actually the British girls were really that good.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.
They knew what they were doing and they just went ahead and did it anyway. That’s where Tory greed gets you.
I love the way you have to get 'Tory' in there, as if the problem was solely down to them.
But your comment leads to a question: what alternative was there back then? Even with the climate crisis, was the energy expended to get the world where it is today, worth the damage to the environment? The pace of technological change in the last hundred years has been phenomenal, and life has never been better for billions.
If we had banned steam power in 1920, where would we be today? We did not have the technology to go green back then, and without plentiful electricity we would not have been able to eventually develop it.
The difference is that nowadays we have much better information on the damage was are doing, and the ability to do things about it: both directly and though mitigation.
I don't think that's right. I reckon in 1920 it would definitely have been possible to generate electricity from wind turbines.
Not much electricity, and not very efficiently, but enough to make a start with.
I'm not saying it would have been a good idea, but I think humans are ingenious on the whole, and a way would have been found.
I disagree. Even by 1920, the local coal generators were generating massive amounts of power, and that was accelerating. Those turbines would have been small and generated tiny amounts of electricity. Industry was moving away from their own individual furnaces towards electricity - the National Grid project started in the 1920s. And you'd have problems with the intermittent nature of the power.
It would have destroyed industry. That would have been good for the environment, but rather poor for the people.
I think we're talking at cross purposes here.
As I said, I agree that it probably wasn't a "good idea".
But in your comment you were suggesting that it would have been literally impossible. I'd argue it would have been more difficult, quite likely seriously sub-optimal, but it would have been possible.
Only with a world government. The fossil fuel users would have had a massive military advantage over the greens - and would almost certainly have taken full advantage of it.
The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.
They knew what they were doing and they just went ahead and did it anyway. That’s where Tory greed gets you.
I love the way you have to get 'Tory' in there, as if the problem was solely down to them.
But your comment leads to a question: what alternative was there back then? Even with the climate crisis, was the energy expended to get the world where it is today, worth the damage to the environment? The pace of technological change in the last hundred years has been phenomenal, and life has never been better for billions.
If we had banned steam power in 1920, where would we be today? We did not have the technology to go green back then, and without plentiful electricity we would not have been able to eventually develop it.
The difference is that nowadays we have much better information on the damage was are doing, and the ability to do things about it: both directly and though mitigation.
I don't think that's right. I reckon in 1920 it would definitely have been possible to generate electricity from wind turbines.
Not much electricity, and not very efficiently, but enough to make a start with.
I'm not saying it would have been a good idea, but I think humans are ingenious on the whole, and a way would have been found.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
IMV the problem with the 1980s mine closures was that they were the latest in a long string of closures, dating back decades. Before then, when a pit closed, there was often one or more remaining in the immediate area. People would lose their jobs, but those who really wanted to mine could still do so. There were also more heavy industries that miners could move into.
But by the early 1980s, closures and amalgamations of mines meant that there might be only a handful left in any area. A pit closed, and the nearest was ten miles away. With the closure of that last pit in an area, the area lost massively, directly and indirectly to support industries. This was accompanied by the death of many heavy industries.
I love the way some people ignore all the mine closures that occurred before and after Thatcher. Simplistic people looking for simplistic, one-word answers to the problems in the world. 'Thatcha!'
Yes; areas like The Valleys were left with almost no, or 'questionably suitable' alternative employment. Max Boyce sand about a chap coming home 'from afternoons....... at Revlon' which epitomised the situation.
Boris putting his foot in it is hardly news but it was crass and he just does not seem to learn to measure his comments
Cop26 is heading for an enormous fudge and like so many of these overhyped events lots will be promised but little happens
Starmer demands the Cambo oil field is cancelled losing 1,000 plus Scots jobs, while Boris maintains he cannot intervene as HMG would be sued by the Company, and Sturgeon hides in a closet as she is scared to make any comment
I would be interested to hear from our SNP posters why Sturgeon is scared to comment
Why should she? It's not a devolved matter, and it's offshore so no planning permission applies AFAIK, and if her opponents are cutting each others' throats she might as well let the dust settle.
She portrays herself as the de facto PM of Scotland but is 'frit' to comment on a hugely controversial scheme which if cancelled loses 1,000 plus Scots jobs
The question is does the SNP support these jobs or do they back Starmer in cancelling the scheme and the jobs created
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
On topic: definitely there were better and less inflammatory ways of making this point. But - progressive parties do love being on the "right side of history", and it's currently the case that defending coal mine closures in the 80s put them very much on the wrong side. The argument over the proposed new mine in Cumbria earlier this year was interesting, in that MPs from both parties often seemed unclear which side of the debate they were supposed to be on.
This morning, as an example, I received a message from one of my deputy clerks which was: "Thanks, I will await developments".
This is yet another entry in my mail box which I often find a full time job just to keep on top of.
This type of email has increased enormously during lockdown and with remote working. Why? Is it the need to show that you are actually reading the emails sent? Or just to have contact? Or does my deputy clerk actually think that this is "work"? I very much fear the last of these. I am sure that there were studies which showed that emails were not in fact boosting productivity some years ago but if this exercise was repeated now with home working I have no doubt at all that it would show a diminution in output.
I get 50-150 work related emails a day. They ask me to do work. They are not work. They are a distraction from work. Leave me alone to get on with some work*!
/end rant.
Or post on PB natch.
It's an acknowledgement that (s)he has received and read your message. I quite often send messages which don't need an immediate response but do need to have been read by the recipients, and this is often actually helpful in telling you that's happened. Otherwise, you can find yourself sitting there a week later and wondering whether you need to chase on whether they saw it or if that will be perceived as rude or patronising.
However, it's long been clear that communication of this king should not be by email. Which is why more and more organisations have switched to collaborative working tools (Slack, MS Teams, etc) to manage internal day-to-day comms. Posting a message, tagging the people who would have been copied in if it was an email, and for them to "like" the message seems to be current etiquette.
Yes, trouble is, doing that, by switching from an asynchronous to a synchronous protocol, increases interruptions. If you want to concentrate, the self-help and productivity gurus will tell you, turn off email for an hour. Far harder to turn off your instant messaging tool, which might be against company policy in any case. Not to mention that in any organisation of any size, Slack channels or Whatsapp chats breed like rabbits. We had literally tens of thousands in my global megacorp.
But email is unreliable. Without the deplored, content-light replies, how do you know your email has been read? How many deals have been lost because email went astray? Especially now that you have an Outlook rule that automatically bins any message that mentions Radiohead, and your company's IT department is blocking pineapple.
I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
National flags a somewhat new fangled idea in any case
It’s now become a code on U.K. Twitter. Union Flag or St George’s Cross alone means “Brexiteer”. Union Flag plus EU Flag means “Soft Remainer”. EU flag alone means “FBPE” (more often than not with the actual hashtag). Saltire alone (or with EU flag) means “Pro-Indy”. Saltire plus Union Flag means “Unionist”. In no case have I any desire to engage as I already know what that person’s take will be, on most topics.
I have a pic of Mishima drawing a katana while smoking a fag. I fear it may reveal too much about me.
I’m actually “me” with an actual photo on Twitter. I occasionally post professional update and, more importantly, it stops me getting into unhinged drunken ranty arguments.
If I were on Twitter...... which I'm not ....... and used the Essex flag (three seaxes) , what would that say about me? And would it be accurate?
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
National flags a somewhat new fangled idea in any case
It’s now become a code on U.K. Twitter. Union Flag or St George’s Cross alone means “Brexiteer”. Union Flag plus EU Flag means “Soft Remainer”. EU flag alone means “FBPE” (more often than not with the actual hashtag). Saltire alone (or with EU flag) means “Pro-Indy”. Saltire plus Union Flag means “Unionist”. In no case have I any desire to engage as I already know what that person’s take will be, on most topics.
I have a pic of Mishima drawing a katana while smoking a fag. I fear it may reveal too much about me.
I’m actually “me” with an actual photo on Twitter. I occasionally post professional update and, more importantly, it stops me getting into unhinged drunken ranty arguments.
If I were on Twitter...... which I'm not ....... and used the Essex flag (three seaxes) , what would that say about me? And would it be accurate?
I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
National flags a somewhat new fangled idea in any case
It’s now become a code on U.K. Twitter. Union Flag or St George’s Cross alone means “Brexiteer”. Union Flag plus EU Flag means “Soft Remainer”. EU flag alone means “FBPE” (more often than not with the actual hashtag). Saltire alone (or with EU flag) means “Pro-Indy”. Saltire plus Union Flag means “Unionist”. In no case have I any desire to engage as I already know what that person’s take will be, on most topics.
I have a pic of Mishima drawing a katana while smoking a fag. I fear it may reveal too much about me.
I’m actually “me” with an actual photo on Twitter. I occasionally post professional update and, more importantly, it stops me getting into unhinged drunken ranty arguments.
If I were on Twitter...... which I'm not ....... and used the Essex flag (three seaxes) , what would that say about me? And would it be accurate?
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
The lack of alternative work for low skilled working class blokes.
Sometimes, for example the Welsh valleys, concentrated in areas which only existed for the mining industry.
There was at least very good redundancy payouts to the miners in the 1980s which meant that those with transferrable skills and/or in economically more adaptable areas often did very well.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
Mr. Oracle, it's been a while since I watched news regularly but one thing that stuck with me was Nick Robinson, as BBC political editor, having a bizarre line on attempts to reduce net migration (I believe by the Coalition Government or it may even have been a Cameron policy in opposition). He implied heavily it was essentially racist because most EU (then unaffected) migrants were white and most non-EU migrants had 'black and brown faces'.
I think sometimes journalists decide they have an opinion and go hunting for evidence and witnesses to support it, rather than gathering information and presenting it.
If you set out grievance hunting over BBC reporting you'll come up with all kinds of stuff. As a regular listener, it seems to me that he mostly just tries to put the opposing case to whomever he happens to be interviewing.
That was what so odd about the interview. The "devil's advocate" and reverse position is very common, and the norm. What was very odd, in this case, was that he was anxiously applying this as if in a normal political interview, but the farmers were not politicians and Brexit wasn't their starting "opposing side". They were mainly interested in talking about day-to-day issues, and the last interviewee only finally confirmed that the underlying reason was Brexit because he could see that Robinson kept trying to pull the interview in irrelevant directions.
It smacks very much to me of the BBC having a strong political anxiety around its coverage of Brexit, to the extent of trying to inject an opposing "balance" into the discussion in all contexts even irrelevantly, and when not interviewing politicians.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
Speaking of classical matters, I've got something like 200 pages (Penguin) of Polybius left to read. I think it'd be less than half that, and I might even be finished, if I hadn't read the Oxford bits not in this edition.
I remain baffled as to why both versions have so much absent.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
If I might just interjecy, that does seem to be a heap of unadulterated bonobo gonads, or so this chap Mr Johnson would say if he knew what a bonobo was.
He has just said “of course there’s going to be a role for Nicola, for Mark Drakeford, for everybody in the COP26.”
"the prime minister stressed that all the devolved administrations will have a role to play in striking green deals."
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
Which just goes to show that Bush is in the hairshirt category.
It is both possible and adequate. Bush is wrong and Boris is right.
There are fewer than 33 million cars in the UK I believe, the notion there isn't enough materials in the world to replace 33 million cars by the end of the decade is completely ludicrous. Absolutely categorically untrue. I'll wager any amount you want at evens that more than 33 million electric vehicles are sold globally within the next decade - which isn't possible according to Bush's claim that there aren't enough materials globally. 🙄
Emissions during manufacturing is something to be dealt with, not a reason to not have manufacturing. As our electricity transforms into net zero energy, the emissions involved in manufacturing will drop dramatically anyway.
This morning, as an example, I received a message from one of my deputy clerks which was: "Thanks, I will await developments".
This is yet another entry in my mail box which I often find a full time job just to keep on top of.
This type of email has increased enormously during lockdown and with remote working. Why? Is it the need to show that you are actually reading the emails sent? Or just to have contact? Or does my deputy clerk actually think that this is "work"? I very much fear the last of these. I am sure that there were studies which showed that emails were not in fact boosting productivity some years ago but if this exercise was repeated now with home working I have no doubt at all that it would show a diminution in output.
I get 50-150 work related emails a day. They ask me to do work. They are not work. They are a distraction from work. Leave me alone to get on with some work*!
/end rant.
Or post on PB natch.
It's an acknowledgement that (s)he has received and read your message. I quite often send messages which don't need an immediate response but do need to have been read by the recipients, and this is often actually helpful in telling you that's happened. Otherwise, you can find yourself sitting there a week later and wondering whether you need to chase on whether they saw it or if that will be perceived as rude or patronising.
However, it's long been clear that communication of this king should not be by email. Which is why more and more organisations have switched to collaborative working tools (Slack, MS Teams, etc) to manage internal day-to-day comms. Posting a message, tagging the people who would have been copied in if it was an email, and for them to "like" the message seems to be current etiquette.
Yes, trouble is, doing that, by switching from an asynchronous to a synchronous protocol, increases interruptions. If you want to concentrate, the self-help and productivity gurus will tell you, turn off email for an hour. Far harder to turn off your instant messaging tool, which might be against company policy in any case. Not to mention that in any organisation of any size, Slack channels or Whatsapp chats breed like rabbits. We had literally tens of thousands in my global megacorp.
But email is unreliable. Without the deplored, content-light replies, how do you know your email has been read? How many deals have been lost because email went astray? Especially now that you have an Outlook rule that automatically bins any message that mentions Radiohead, and your company's IT department is blocking pineapple.
Correct etiquette is super important in making these tools work as intended. We're currently at a similar stage of development at which email was being used to share dodgy jokes. Hopefully it will get better quickly, and we'll all collectively learn when making new channels is necessary and when it isn't, and how to manage systems so that you get the information you need to do your job in an efficient way.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
Because COP26 is clearly going to be a disaster, the political equivalent of the farmer's muckspreader in the field behind my house, and he wants to spaff the shite over everyone else.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
Went 50 miles along the A1 very recently. Hundreds of lorries trundling up and down. Numberplates from all over.
Really can't see anything changing over the next nine years.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
Which just goes to show that Bush is in the hairshirt category.
It is both possible and adequate. Bush is wrong and Boris is right.
There are fewer than 33 million cars in the UK I believe, the notion there isn't enough materials in the world to replace 33 million cars by the end of the decade is completely ludicrous. Absolutely categorically untrue. I'll wager any amount you want at evens that more than 33 million electric vehicles are sold globally within the next decade - which isn't possible according to Bush's claim that there aren't enough materials globally. 🙄
Emissions during manufacturing is something to be dealt with, not a reason to not have manufacturing. As our electricity transforms into net zero energy, the emissions involved in manufacturing will drop dramatically anyway.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with him - simply noting that this is some of the current discourse. Don't know enough to say if he is right or if it is a slip for all the cars in the world.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
Because COP26 is clearly going to be a disaster, the political equivalent of the farmer's muckspreader in the field behind my house, and he wants to spaff the shite over everyone else.
BJ reverse ferreting for reasons of arse covering and blame sharing, surely not?
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
You just told us "Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26".
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
You just told us "Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26".
In her own right she doesn't, because she's not the leader of a country participating in its own right.
As part of the UK's delegation, if she wishes to collaborate with Boris and play a part in the UK's efforts then that's of course a possibility. That's a completely different issue.
But it doesn't make it a devolved issue. International negotiations are not devolved.
The Kenny family now have more all-time golds (11) than Ireland (10) or India (9)
Ireland are fortunate to have three of those 10 golds in my opinion.
I wonder if the Kenny's son, Albert, will take to cycling?
TBH, in a way, I hope he doesn't, as if he does he'll always be compared to Mum and Dad.
I know that there's no familial connection, but there was a time when the most famous Ronaldo in world football was Brazilian, and people wondered how this young Portuguese kid was ever going to escape the reputation of his more famous namesake.
Perhaps the child will outdo his parents? In years to come people might say, "Interestingly, cycling superstar Albert Kenny's parents were also Olympians, though they never matched the feats of their son..."
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
Quite. But will he change his mind again. That's the issue.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
IMV the problem with the 1980s mine closures was that they were the latest in a long string of closures, dating back decades. Before then, when a pit closed, there was often one or more remaining in the immediate area. People would lose their jobs, but those who really wanted to mine could still do so. There were also more heavy industries that miners could move into.
But by the early 1980s, closures and amalgamations of mines meant that there might be only a handful left in any area. A pit closed, and the nearest was ten miles away. With the closure of that last pit in an area, the area lost massively, directly and indirectly to support industries. This was accompanied by the death of many heavy industries.
I love the way some people ignore all the mine closures that occurred before and after Thatcher. Simplistic people looking for simplistic, one-word answers to the problems in the world. 'Thatcha!'
Edit: meant to explain that at least in Scotland in the 1950/60s-ish the NCB and councils/Scottish Special Housing Association worked together to create whole new housing estates for the miners from closed pits elsewhere to be moved into to staff the new modern pits, in Fife and Lothian.
And not just mining: the 'little Scotland' in Corby is another example from steelworking, dating back to the 1930s.
The KLF's Bill Drummond is a classic example of a Scot (albeit born in SA) whose family moved to Corby.
I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
National flags a somewhat new fangled idea in any case
It’s now become a code on U.K. Twitter. Union Flag or St George’s Cross alone means “Brexiteer”. Union Flag plus EU Flag means “Soft Remainer”. EU flag alone means “FBPE” (more often than not with the actual hashtag). Saltire alone (or with EU flag) means “Pro-Indy”. Saltire plus Union Flag means “Unionist”. In no case have I any desire to engage as I already know what that person’s take will be, on most topics.
I have a pic of Mishima drawing a katana while smoking a fag. I fear it may reveal too much about me.
I’m actually “me” with an actual photo on Twitter. I occasionally post professional update and, more importantly, it stops me getting into unhinged drunken ranty arguments.
If I were on Twitter...... which I'm not ....... and used the Essex flag (three seaxes) , what would that say about me? And would it be accurate?
It would probably suggest you were from/in Essex. Or Middlesex if you (or the viewer) was a bit confused
Confession: I'd always thought they were 'sea axes' (e.g. another word for cutlass, perhaps). Silly me.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
Because COP26 is clearly going to be a disaster, the political equivalent of the farmer's muckspreader in the field behind my house, and he wants to spaff the shite over everyone else.
Where @Philip_Thompson is right, of course, is that this would be a failure of international diplomacy…. Whether it will rank below the G7 as an international embarrassment we wait to see..
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
Quite. But will he change his mind again. That's the issue.
He was saying that Ms Sturgeon should be barred from the climate conference up until now.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
IMV the problem with the 1980s mine closures was that they were the latest in a long string of closures, dating back decades. Before then, when a pit closed, there was often one or more remaining in the immediate area. People would lose their jobs, but those who really wanted to mine could still do so. There were also more heavy industries that miners could move into.
But by the early 1980s, closures and amalgamations of mines meant that there might be only a handful left in any area. A pit closed, and the nearest was ten miles away. With the closure of that last pit in an area, the area lost massively, directly and indirectly to support industries. This was accompanied by the death of many heavy industries.
I love the way some people ignore all the mine closures that occurred before and after Thatcher. Simplistic people looking for simplistic, one-word answers to the problems in the world. 'Thatcha!'
Other way round too. It is this factor that you describe, that often it was the last pit in an area, that left desolated pit villages and one-industry towns, that does make what happened in the 1980s qualitatively different, and not mitigated by pointing to closures under other governments. iirc even Sir Geoffrey Howe acknowledged this.
Yes, but the alternative was to leave those pits open, filling them with useless money as the coal left. And IMV it is mitigated by closures under other governments - especially later ones. It was a long-term trend.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
Went 50 miles along the A1 very recently. Hundreds of lorries trundling up and down. Numberplates from all over.
Really can't see anything changing over the next nine years.
But, but, they aren't allowed to come because of brexit are they? How come we have this widespread hunger and desperation, let alone a shortage of flaked parmesan, if lorry drivers are still coming from "all over"? This surely doesn't compute.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
Because COP26 is clearly going to be a disaster, the political equivalent of the farmer's muckspreader in the field behind my house, and he wants to spaff the shite over everyone else.
Where @Philip_Thompson is right, of course, is that this would be a failure of international diplomacy…. Whether it will rank below the G7 as an international embarrassment we wait to see..
I'd be pleasantly surprised if that were the case.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
You just told us "Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26".
In her own right she doesn't, because she's not the leader of a country participating in its own right.
As part of the UK's delegation, if she wishes to collaborate with Boris and play a part in the UK's efforts then that's of course a possibility. That's a completely different issue.
But it doesn't make it a devolved issue. International negotiations are not devolved.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
Went 50 miles along the A1 very recently. Hundreds of lorries trundling up and down. Numberplates from all over.
Really can't see anything changing over the next nine years.
I expect COP26 to be a lot of hot air from leaders across the world but little to follow, precisely because of the last sentence in @Carnyx comments
Politicians and leaders know climate change is on everyone's lips and they have to be seen to be taking it seriously but when it comes to the hard decisions where are the leaders as it is not obvious at present and of course they all have to act together, not just one or two on their own
As I have commented earlier, Starmer calls for the cancellation of the Cambo project with the loss of 1,000 plus Scottish jobs, Boris says HMG could be sued if they cancel it, and Sturgeon hides away 'frit' from commenting even though it affects 1,000+ Scottish jobs
And to be honest that is a fairly small decision compared to the radical ones demanded by the green lobby
I cunningly avoid flags on Twitter by having no idea how to add them and no interest in finding out.
National flags a somewhat new fangled idea in any case
It’s now become a code on U.K. Twitter. Union Flag or St George’s Cross alone means “Brexiteer”. Union Flag plus EU Flag means “Soft Remainer”. EU flag alone means “FBPE” (more often than not with the actual hashtag). Saltire alone (or with EU flag) means “Pro-Indy”. Saltire plus Union Flag means “Unionist”. In no case have I any desire to engage as I already know what that person’s take will be, on most topics.
I have a pic of Mishima drawing a katana while smoking a fag. I fear it may reveal too much about me.
I’m actually “me” with an actual photo on Twitter. I occasionally post professional update and, more importantly, it stops me getting into unhinged drunken ranty arguments.
If I were on Twitter...... which I'm not ....... and used the Essex flag (three seaxes) , what would that say about me? And would it be accurate?
It would probably suggest you were from/in Essex. Or Middlesex if you (or the viewer) was a bit confused
Confession: I'd always thought they were 'sea axes' (e.g. another word for cutlass, perhaps). Silly me.
It's the notch that does it. Tears as well as cuts, which is what a cutlass does. Nasty, whatsits, the ancient East Saxons. I'm only resident here, not genetically involved.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
Went 50 miles along the A1 very recently. Hundreds of lorries trundling up and down. Numberplates from all over.
Really can't see anything changing over the next nine years.
But, but, they aren't allowed to come because of brexit are they? How come we have this widespread hunger and desperation, let alone a shortage of flaked parmesan, if lorry drivers are still coming from "all over"? This surely doesn't compute.
Have you seen the price of flaked parmesan recently? People are applauding the "well pay people more then" but it is the consumer who suffers.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
You just told us "Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26".
In her own right she doesn't, because she's not the leader of a country participating in its own right.
As part of the UK's delegation, if she wishes to collaborate with Boris and play a part in the UK's efforts then that's of course a possibility. That's a completely different issue.
But it doesn't make it a devolved issue. International negotiations are not devolved.
You’re still missing the point entirely…
What also makes it more interesting - in ways I can't quite work out yet - is the alliance (though not formal coalition) between the SNP and SGP. For instance, could they put one of the SG co-conveners as a leading participant to the conference?
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
You just told us "Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26".
In her own right she doesn't, because she's not the leader of a country participating in its own right.
As part of the UK's delegation, if she wishes to collaborate with Boris and play a part in the UK's efforts then that's of course a possibility. That's a completely different issue.
But it doesn't make it a devolved issue. International negotiations are not devolved.
You’re still missing the point entirely…
What point?
International diplomacy is not devolved and never has been devolved. Do you agree or disagree with that?
The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.
They knew what they were doing and they just went ahead and did it anyway. That’s where Tory greed gets you.
I love the way you have to get 'Tory' in there, as if the problem was solely down to them.
But your comment leads to a question: what alternative was there back then? Even with the climate crisis, was the energy expended to get the world where it is today, worth the damage to the environment? The pace of technological change in the last hundred years has been phenomenal, and life has never been better for billions.
If we had banned steam power in 1920, where would we be today? We did not have the technology to go green back then, and without plentiful electricity we would not have been able to eventually develop it.
The difference is that nowadays we have much better information on the damage was are doing, and the ability to do things about it: both directly and though mitigation.
I don't think that's right. I reckon in 1920 it would definitely have been possible to generate electricity from wind turbines.
Not much electricity, and not very efficiently, but enough to make a start with.
I'm not saying it would have been a good idea, but I think humans are ingenious on the whole, and a way would have been found.
I disagree. Even by 1920, the local coal generators were generating massive amounts of power, and that was accelerating. Those turbines would have been small and generated tiny amounts of electricity. Industry was moving away from their own individual furnaces towards electricity - the National Grid project started in the 1920s. And you'd have problems with the intermittent nature of the power.
It would have destroyed industry. That would have been good for the environment, but rather poor for the people.
I think we're talking at cross purposes here.
As I said, I agree that it probably wasn't a "good idea".
But in your comment you were suggesting that it would have been literally impossible. I'd argue it would have been more difficult, quite likely seriously sub-optimal, but it would have been possible.
My own guess is that it would have been impossible, politically and engineering-wise. Politically, you would have required everyone in the world to do it, as any country going down this route would have been at a massive disadvantage.
Engineering-wise, turbines require lots of steel and other materials, all of which need to be created using power (either electricity or via fossil fuels). There needs to be a national grid for transferring the electricity to its sink, and a way of storing vast amounts of power for when the wind is not blowing.
We're not exactly doing well with the latter of these, even at the moment.
Is my guess correct? What we'd need to know is the efficiency of those early turbines, how much power each generated, and their cost.
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
You just told us "Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26".
In her own right she doesn't, because she's not the leader of a country participating in its own right.
As part of the UK's delegation, if she wishes to collaborate with Boris and play a part in the UK's efforts then that's of course a possibility. That's a completely different issue.
But it doesn't make it a devolved issue. International negotiations are not devolved.
You’re still missing the point entirely…
What point?
International diplomacy is not devolved and never has been devolved. Do you agree or disagree with that?
Mr Johnson doesn't agree with you, all of a sudden, after agreeing very, very, very strongly with you.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
IMV the problem with the 1980s mine closures was that they were the latest in a long string of closures, dating back decades. Before then, when a pit closed, there was often one or more remaining in the immediate area. People would lose their jobs, but those who really wanted to mine could still do so. There were also more heavy industries that miners could move into.
But by the early 1980s, closures and amalgamations of mines meant that there might be only a handful left in any area. A pit closed, and the nearest was ten miles away. With the closure of that last pit in an area, the area lost massively, directly and indirectly to support industries. This was accompanied by the death of many heavy industries.
I love the way some people ignore all the mine closures that occurred before and after Thatcher. Simplistic people looking for simplistic, one-word answers to the problems in the world. 'Thatcha!'
Other way round too. It is this factor that you describe, that often it was the last pit in an area, that left desolated pit villages and one-industry towns, that does make what happened in the 1980s qualitatively different, and not mitigated by pointing to closures under other governments. iirc even Sir Geoffrey Howe acknowledged this.
Yes, but the alternative was to leave those pits open, filling them with useless money as the coal left. And IMV it is mitigated by closures under other governments - especially later ones. It was a long-term trend.
No, the alternative was to have accessible other employment. Which, for example, was eventually brought to NE County Durham in the form of Nissan.
The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.
They knew what they were doing and they just went ahead and did it anyway. That’s where Tory greed gets you.
I love the way you have to get 'Tory' in there, as if the problem was solely down to them.
But your comment leads to a question: what alternative was there back then? Even with the climate crisis, was the energy expended to get the world where it is today, worth the damage to the environment? The pace of technological change in the last hundred years has been phenomenal, and life has never been better for billions.
If we had banned steam power in 1920, where would we be today? We did not have the technology to go green back then, and without plentiful electricity we would not have been able to eventually develop it.
The difference is that nowadays we have much better information on the damage was are doing, and the ability to do things about it: both directly and though mitigation.
I don't think that's right. I reckon in 1920 it would definitely have been possible to generate electricity from wind turbines.
Not much electricity, and not very efficiently, but enough to make a start with.
I'm not saying it would have been a good idea, but I think humans are ingenious on the whole, and a way would have been found.
I disagree. Even by 1920, the local coal generators were generating massive amounts of power, and that was accelerating. Those turbines would have been small and generated tiny amounts of electricity. Industry was moving away from their own individual furnaces towards electricity - the National Grid project started in the 1920s. And you'd have problems with the intermittent nature of the power.
It would have destroyed industry. That would have been good for the environment, but rather poor for the people.
I think we're talking at cross purposes here.
As I said, I agree that it probably wasn't a "good idea".
But in your comment you were suggesting that it would have been literally impossible. I'd argue it would have been more difficult, quite likely seriously sub-optimal, but it would have been possible.
My own guess is that it would have been impossible, politically and engineering-wise. Politically, you would have required everyone in the world to do it, as any country going down this route would have been at a massive disadvantage.
Engineering-wise, turbines require lots of steel and other materials, all of which need to be created using power (either electricity or via fossil fuels). There needs to be a national grid for transferring the electricity to its sink, and a way of storing vast amounts of power for when the wind is not blowing.
We're not exactly doing well with the latter of these, even at the moment.
Is my guess correct? What we'd need to know is the efficiency of those early turbines, how much power each generated, and their cost.
There's a fascinating history of the Lyme Regis town hydro plant set up in about 1920 IIRC - Electric Lyme it's called. One of those books that one finds completely by accident. Went to have a look at t'mill as a result. (They have now set up another generator there.)
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
Went 50 miles along the A1 very recently. Hundreds of lorries trundling up and down. Numberplates from all over.
Really can't see anything changing over the next nine years.
I expect COP26 to be a lot of hot air from leaders across the world but little to follow, precisely because of the last sentence in @Carnyx comments
Politicians and leaders know climate change is on everyone's lips and they have to be seen to be taking it seriously but when it comes to the hard decisions where are the leaders as it is not obvious at present and of course they all have to act together, not just one or two on their own
As I have commented earlier, Starmer calls for the cancellation of the Cambo project with the loss of 1,000 plus Scottish jobs, Boris says HMG could be sued if they cancel it, and Sturgeon hides away 'frit' from commenting even though it affects 1,000+ Scottish jobs
And to be honest that is a fairly small decision compared to the radical ones demanded by the green lobby
The green lobby are batshit crazy lunatics that should be ignored.
Green issues are getting resolved and while the 'hard' decisions may not be getting made, the 'right' decisions are.
The right solution to green issues is to invest in green technologies. Not to shut down all construction or manufacturing.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
Went 50 miles along the A1 very recently. Hundreds of lorries trundling up and down. Numberplates from all over.
Really can't see anything changing over the next nine years.
I expect COP26 to be a lot of hot air from leaders across the world but little to follow, precisely because of the last sentence in @Carnyx comments
Politicians and leaders know climate change is on everyone's lips and they have to be seen to be taking it seriously but when it comes to the hard decisions where are the leaders as it is not obvious at present and of course they all have to act together, not just one or two on their own
As I have commented earlier, Starmer calls for the cancellation of the Cambo project with the loss of 1,000 plus Scottish jobs, Boris says HMG could be sued if they cancel it, and Sturgeon hides away 'frit' from commenting even though it affects 1,000+ Scottish jobs
And to be honest that is a fairly small decision compared to the radical ones demanded by the green lobby
Like, it appears, our PM, I was unaware of the Cambo oilfield. The first article I found was from the National. It contains this gem of useless statistical posturing -
"If given the go-ahead the crude oil field, co-owned by Siccar Point Energy and Shell, could extract at least 150 million barrels of oil in its first phase – the emissions from which are equivalent to running a coal power station for 16 years."
You feel they were trying to mine an exhausted seam of humour?
I think they spoil tip by trying to be funny.
Just trying to slag off Johnson.
Bingo on the puns. (Don't know if southrons will spot both mine.)
More seriously: has anyone on PB or elsewhere noted that it's not just a matter of 1980s history. Mr Johnson has just given a rather brilliant impression of enunciating the equation:
climate change policy = brilliant excuse for the Tories to screw the working classes and their communities, what japes!
Which is the last thing we all need at the moment, especially with him fronting COP26 - in Scotland, too.
This is much the more important point re the Thatcher comment… the effort is now underway to play down the importance of COP26 specifically and carbon reduction generally. Climate change has clearly slipped from an opportunity to push Global Britain and sanctify Boris to being a nuisance. Sturgeon and Drakeford are not being asked to participate because COP is going to be an unqualified success.
Indeed - up to now it was all about keeping the First Minister out of a conference in Scotland on a subject which is very much a devolved matter, lest Mr Johnson have to share the limelight.
How is international diplomacy a devolved matter?
Renewables, energy etc. are devolved matters.
But international diplomacy over them is not.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
You’re wholly missing the point…
There is no point.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
The Times yesterday: “Boris Johnson has extended an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon by offering her a role in Cop26, after having said that the first minister should be barred from the climate conference.”
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
The PM can delegate to whoever he wants to, including the devolved leaders if he chooses to do so.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
You just told us "Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26".
In her own right she doesn't, because she's not the leader of a country participating in its own right.
As part of the UK's delegation, if she wishes to collaborate with Boris and play a part in the UK's efforts then that's of course a possibility. That's a completely different issue.
But it doesn't make it a devolved issue. International negotiations are not devolved.
You’re still missing the point entirely…
What point?
International diplomacy is not devolved and never has been devolved. Do you agree or disagree with that?
Mr Johnson doesn't agree with you, all of a sudden, after agreeing very, very, very strongly with you.
That's not true. Johnson offering Sturgeon a role to play in his team, if she wants to collaborate with him, like he's offered Alok Sharma and others a role is entirely his prerogative.
Comments
Cyclists do have a great record in SPotY, but Daley is very well known and liked. Tough to choose between them.
Feels like this is a big blow for Cavendish.
Verstappen at 251 for Spain 2016 stands out, but also multiple, including Perez 61 to win, for Sakhir 2020.
And, oddly, the last but one Lib Dem leadership contest which enabled me to lay almost every candidate as they withdrew having luckily backed Swinson a few days previously.
Edited to clarify: *by this I mean information for making said bets, not tips directly.
(And if you are betting watch your money go down the drain really slowly.)
As a regular listener, it seems to me that he mostly just tries to put the opposing case to whomever he happens to be interviewing.
https://twitter.com/iainmartin1/status/1423565871855849474?s=21
This morning, as an example, I received a message from one of my deputy clerks which was: "Thanks, I will await developments".
This is yet another entry in my mail box which I often find a full time job just to keep on top of.
This type of email has increased enormously during lockdown and with remote working. Why? Is it the need to show that you are actually reading the emails sent? Or just to have contact? Or does my deputy clerk actually think that this is "work"?
I very much fear the last of these. I am sure that there were studies which showed that emails were not in fact boosting productivity some years ago but if this exercise was repeated now with home working I have no doubt at all that it would show a diminution in output.
I get 50-150 work related emails a day. They ask me to do work. They are not work. They are a distraction from work. Leave me alone to get on with some work*!
/end rant.
Or post on PB natch.
Could we have retained more of our manufacturing as the old industries were abandoned ? Quite possibly.
If an email is between multiple parties however email etiquette does not require a response
You are Jacob Rees Mogg and I claim £5.
Holyrood is merely a creation of Westminster statute after all and the Tories will never win a majority at Holyrood as they now have at Westminster anyway.
The only way the Tories would ever get any power at Holyrood is in coalition with Labour and the LDs which is not the case at Westminster. So it does not really matter if some Tory regional MSPs in the Central belt are replaced by Labour regional MSPs as they would both be anti SNP.
Plus the next Holyrood election is not until 2026, the next Westminster election will be in 2023/4
(The rowing on the other hand…)
However, it's long been clear that communication of this kind should not be by email. Which is why more and more organisations have switched to collaborative working tools (Slack, MS Teams, etc) to manage internal day-to-day comms. Posting a message, tagging the people who would have been copied in if it was an email, and for them to "like" the message seems to be current etiquette.
Sometimes competitors can be a victim of their own success. It was difficult to watch that race and not think that the opposition was a bit rubbish, but actually the British girls were really that good.
COP26 is international diplomacy. That is not devolved, it never has been.
The fossil fuel users would have had a massive military advantage over the greens - and would almost certainly have taken full advantage of it.
Whether the 17th century still qualifies as new-fangled depends on your perspective. The Pharaohs were a long time ago.
The question is does the SNP support these jobs or do they back Starmer in cancelling the scheme and the jobs created
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But email is unreliable. Without the deplored, content-light replies, how do you know your email has been read? How many deals have been lost because email went astray? Especially now that you have an Outlook rule that automatically bins any message that mentions Radiohead, and your company's IT department is blocking pineapple.
And would it be accurate?
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving.
We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity.
We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
Sometimes, for example the Welsh valleys, concentrated in areas which only existed for the mining industry.
There was at least very good redundancy payouts to the miners in the 1980s which meant that those with transferrable skills and/or in economically more adaptable areas often did very well.
Too subtle for some clods apparently..
Where is Scotland's signature on the Paris Accords? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Paris_Agreement
How Scotland handles environmental issues domestically may be devolved, but how the UK negotiates environmental issues internationally most definitely is not and never has been.
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
It smacks very much to me of the BBC having a strong political anxiety around its coverage of Brexit, to the extent of trying to inject an opposing "balance" into the discussion in all contexts even irrelevantly, and when not interviewing politicians.
Sturgeon has no role to play in COP26 because she's not an international stateswoman leading an independent country in international negotiations. As much as she wishes to cosplay as the leader of an independent country, it isn't true.
I remain baffled as to why both versions have so much absent.
He has just said “of course there’s going to be a role for Nicola, for Mark Drakeford, for everybody in the COP26.”
"the prime minister stressed that all the devolved administrations will have a role to play in striking green deals."
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nicola-sturgeon-will-have-role-at-cop26-says-boris-johnson-jqf2mq93n
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/boris-johnson-offers-role-to-nicola-sturgeon-in-cop26-3335166
So, apart from you’re being uncharacteristically so completely wrong, the point is: why the change?
TBH, in a way, I hope he doesn't, as if he does he'll always be compared to Mum and Dad.
It is both possible and adequate. Bush is wrong and Boris is right.
There are fewer than 33 million cars in the UK I believe, the notion there isn't enough materials in the world to replace 33 million cars by the end of the decade is completely ludicrous. Absolutely categorically untrue. I'll wager any amount you want at evens that more than 33 million electric vehicles are sold globally within the next decade - which isn't possible according to Bush's claim that there aren't enough materials globally. 🙄
Emissions during manufacturing is something to be dealt with, not a reason to not have manufacturing. As our electricity transforms into net zero energy, the emissions involved in manufacturing will drop dramatically anyway.
Really can't see anything changing over the next nine years.
That does not make it her role by right, any more than the Governor of New York or Mayor of Paris has a role automatically. That does not make it a devolved issue.
If the PM wishes to offer a role to Sturgeon or Burnham or any other devolved leaders, that's his prerogative.
As part of the UK's delegation, if she wishes to collaborate with Boris and play a part in the UK's efforts then that's of course a possibility. That's a completely different issue.
But it doesn't make it a devolved issue. International negotiations are not devolved.
Perhaps the child will outdo his parents? In years to come people might say, "Interestingly, cycling superstar Albert Kenny's parents were also Olympians, though they never matched the feats of their son..."
The KLF's Bill Drummond is a classic example of a Scot (albeit born in SA) whose family moved to Corby.
Confession: I'd always thought they were 'sea axes' (e.g. another word for cutlass, perhaps). Silly me.
He was saying that Ms Sturgeon should be barred from the climate conference up until now.
[edit - apols, you did say 'again']
Politicians and leaders know climate change is on everyone's lips and they have to be seen to be taking it seriously but when it comes to the hard decisions where are the leaders as it is not obvious at present and of course they all have to act together, not just one or two on their own
As I have commented earlier, Starmer calls for the cancellation of the Cambo project with the loss of 1,000 plus Scottish jobs, Boris says HMG could be sued if they cancel it, and Sturgeon hides away 'frit' from commenting even though it affects 1,000+ Scottish jobs
And to be honest that is a fairly small decision compared to the radical ones demanded by the green lobby
I'm only resident here, not genetically involved.
That the world's second (soon to be the) most populace nation has only ever achieved 9 golds is even more incredible.
As will inevitably play out.
International diplomacy is not devolved and never has been devolved. Do you agree or disagree with that?
Engineering-wise, turbines require lots of steel and other materials, all of which need to be created using power (either electricity or via fossil fuels). There needs to be a national grid for transferring the electricity to its sink, and a way of storing vast amounts of power for when the wind is not blowing.
We're not exactly doing well with the latter of these, even at the moment.
Is my guess correct? What we'd need to know is the efficiency of those early turbines, how much power each generated, and their cost.
Green issues are getting resolved and while the 'hard' decisions may not be getting made, the 'right' decisions are.
The right solution to green issues is to invest in green technologies. Not to shut down all construction or manufacturing.
"If given the go-ahead the crude oil field, co-owned by Siccar Point Energy and Shell, could extract at least 150 million barrels of oil in its first phase – the emissions from which are equivalent to running a coal power station for 16 years."
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19493760.cambo-oil-field-boris-johnson-not-aware-shetland-project/
I'd now rather like to know, how many coal-power-station-years of energy generation will 150m barrels of crude oil produce?
Here endeth the lesson.
That doesn't make diplomacy devolved.